Major Challenges Facing the Practising Systems Engineer

Growing Importance of Information-Driven Systems In the Past Systems have been seen from an operations point of view, where information and communications have been regarded as the supply of services necessary for the system to operate in pre-defined ways. Nowadays There is a rapidly evolving trend towards the development of large-scale information-dominated systems, which exploit COTS and communications technologies, have superior performance and reliability, and are derived in response to various types of information drawn from a wide array of sources. Simply put -- these systems have functionality that would not be possible without an ability to gather and work with data/information. Example In a modern automobile, the electronics and communication systems account for 30% of the overall cost. Figure 1. Electronics and Communications in a Modern Car. (Source: A.S. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, EE 249, UC Berkeley, Fall 2002.)

Section 3-3: April, 2003.